The Girl’s Name

When Planetarium was first released, we challenged readers to see
who would be the first to solve it completely. This is now known as the
9/9/99 Competition (because
that’s when it started), and twelve weeks later, several people had
indeed completed it. To help distinguish between them, Planetarium
contained a tiebreaker. The
tiebreaker was simply to suggest a name for the girl central to the
Planetarium story — she’s never explicitly named in
the story (the oddity of this is somewhat justified when you find the
tiebreaker for yourself).

Now the competition is over the tiebreaker serves no function, but we
kept it in as an interesting diversion for readers working through the
story. As a result, from time to time readers still post new suggestions
in the xiii Forum.

Two years after Planetarium’s release, we decided to compile
our favourite suggestions and present them outside of the xiii Forum.
If you are currently working through Planetarium you might prefer
not to read further — there are no ‘spoilers’ here, but
the tiebreakers were suggested by people who, by definition, had the
benefit of knowing the complete story. Also, remember that we offer no firm
confirmation of what the girl is really called. Maybe we know, maybe we
don’t, but either way we’re not saying. You can decide
for yourself.

The reader-name of whoever originally nominated the name is shown too.